Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card Hen – 05

「さくらとお花見ひっぱりだこ」 (Sakura to Ohanami Hipparidako)
“Sakura Feels a Pull at the Flower Viewing”

God I hate it when this show tries to play with my emotions.

General Impressions

With the plot still following along our tried and true path of one new card per episode, this week introduced the new gravity card and not much else. However, I say that with the utmost confidence and least amount of snarkyness possible since next week’s episode is looking like it’ll be the spike in adrenaline and action that we so sorely need.

That said, from a holistic perspective, this week’s episode was pretty darn good if you were looking for our side characters to get some well deserved screen time. For me, I’m a sucker whenever Kero-chan or Touya get a chance to say more than just a few lines so I was pretty content after the first ten minutes or so. Luckily though, there was a lot more waiting just ahead with all of Sakura’s friends from school getting a chance to shoot the breeze while sharing lunch under some beautiful sakura trees. And honestly, it’s never boring watching all of them just go about eating lunch while making lame puns or fake but funny stories.

When it comes to the Gravity Card though, boy was it a little disappointing to see just how short the capture moment was. With a face similar to Tomoyo’s, I wish we were given a little bit more when it came to Sakura overcoming the force that was violently pulling her toward that tree. That said, I suppose it’d be pretty bad if things got any more serious than they already were since there were so many people enjoying the scenery. That said, it’s probably a miracle that Sakura’s been able to keep her secret for even this long when the offending cards seem to be getting bolder and bolder with each passing episode.

All-in-all, not too bad of an episode especially if you were looking for some development for as many characters as possible. Unfortunately, we didn’t get any follow up to Syaoran’s sneaky conversation last week which was something I was really hoping for. I’m sure we’ll learn in due time just what the heck is going on, but until then I’m going to constantly be looking at Syaoran with some super suspicious eyes. Especially when the guy starts trying to act all romantic with Sakura!

Probably because CCS’ fillers are actually believable in being part of the overall story; maintaining the tone, atmosphere, events, etc. whereas a lot of other filler is done just to…well…fill up space, extend the series, etc. and have no impact on the main story (or forcing out an anime original ending) and can sometimes even (inadvertently) contradict the main story in one or more ways if not done properly.

Cardcaptor will be 2-cour (either 23 or 26 eps, based on news sources).
Rewatching some of the old season’s episodes, I noticed the early eps of an arc could be very SOL interaction focused, sometimes reducing the cardcapturing to a mere footnote in that episode.
So I think the new season will stick to the old formula of SOL + cardcapturing in the earlier eps, with the serious stuff happening around the middle/end.

Of course! I have a feeling we will get some sort of Rayearth and Tsubasa Chronicle cameos at some point. Reborn Clone Sakura is a classmate of Fuu’s I recall. And she has CCS Sakura’s staff….my head is starting to hurt. First FATE and now CLAMP this season…

Although I am enjoying the extension of my favorite Anime, my concern is for.my favorite character Tomoyo Daidouji. I don’t remember Tomoyo getting this much facial emotion in previous series. Tomoyo was mainly a support character.

Tomoyo did all sorts of stuff in the first series. However we rarely saw her really depressed, because the writers didn’t seem so determined to prevent her from fulfilling her one joy in life as they are in this seres.

I started to rewatch the first now after all these years and early on Sakura points out Tomoyo doesn’t speak of her dad at all and I don’t remember this be mentioned again later. Maybe we will see something. I wish.

so right now everything is a filler, and that’s way the design of this card and action is not relative to the canon manga (said of the new cards being a reintepretation of the old ones). sooo :/ i stooped seing the new anime after chapter 3 (the rule of 3 chapters)